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THE STONE TABLETS OF MOSES | |
| Moses' Stone Tablets were they stelae? |
Whenever
artists depict Moses, they show him holding the
two stone tablets given to him by God (see Exodus 20 and 34). These
tablets were engraved with a long list of commandments that formed, in
essence, a law code for the ancient Hebrew people. The Hebrew people were not isolated in time and space. They were part of Eastern Mediterranean culture, and shared in the culture and ideas of their neighbors. The Tablets of the Law, as described in Exodus 20 and 34, bear a striking resemblance to the stele on which the Laws of Hammurabi were carved (see below). Similar codes of law were created in several nearby civilizations, including Ur-Nammu's code and the later Hittite code of laws. There were certainly differences between the content of the two sets of laws - comparison shows that the laws of the Old Testament were predominantly 'apodictic' - they began with 'thou shalt' or 'thou shalt not', whereas most ancient law codes were casuistic: 'when a man...., he shall....'. But the actual tablets were probably similar to the stele of Hammurabi. |
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The stele of Hammurabi is
made of polished black diorite. It was made circa 1790-1800BC in Babylon. The text is Cuneiform. It is held in the Louvre Museum, France. |
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